Stick THIS in your hat, Mr. Doodle

Now that the 4th of July, the most patriotic of holidays, is upon us, the time is right for reconsidering a national classic: “Yankee Doodle,” a quintessentially American tune—a song so well established that its absurdity slips right past us. What, after all, does it mean to stick a feather in your hat and call it macaroni?Looked at closely, “Yankee Doodle” is less...

Mind your reds and blues

Poor Duncan. He heads for his crayons one day in class, only to find a stack of letters waiting. He simply wants to color, but instead he has 12 manifestos to read. Little did Duncan know his crayons are beleaguered, bitter and beset with all sorts of headaches. Purple is about to lose it and would like Duncan to color inside the lines. Black is tired of being used merely for the outlines of...

Welcome to the gray area

Sierra Shepherd is a model seventh grader at her middle school. As a member of the Leadership Club and an exclusive choir group, Sierra prides herself on her accomplishments. She makes good grades and follows the rules. The biggest rule is zero tolerance for bringing any kind of weapon to school, and Sierra would never dream of violating that one! So when she realizes that she grabbed her...

A mystery-solving girl stands out

With two older sisters and three younger brothers, Sunday is often lost in the middle. She is so tired of being overlooked and forgotten, in fact, that she is determined to do something to make herself stand out. When her father moves the family to the small town of Alma to help rebuild the local library, Sunday decides this is her chance. Somehow, some way, she will make her mark while she is...

Honoring the old ways of the Pacific Northwest

Author Rosanne Parry’s first teaching job was on the Quinault Indian reservation in Taholah, Washington. Her fifth grade students at Taholah Elementary asked her why there had never been a book about them. Their questions launched Parry on a career as a writer of award-winning novels for young readers, including Heart of a Shepherd. Now, with Written in Stone, a heartfelt, meticulously...

Whispers in the dark

Many YA books tackle the topic of teens with eating disorders and body image issues. Some, like Skinny by Donna Cooner, include insistent internal voices that whisper damaging thoughts to their hosts. Others, like Nothing by Robin Friedman and Purge by Sarah Darer Littman, portray teen boys struggling with anorexia and bulimia. But none combine these elements in quite the same way as Lois...

To survive a killer, a boy must learn to accept himself

“Even to the strangers, I am strange,” remarks 13-year-old Habo, short for Dhahabo, which means “golden” in his home country of Tanzania. The teen never feels the warmth suggested by his special name, given to him for his light appearance due to albinism, but is instead an outcast in his world. With a father who abandoned the family after Habo’s birth, a mother who...

As India divides, three lives intertwine

Jennifer Bradbury’s ambitious new novel takes place in 1947 in the Indian city of Jalandhar, near the modern border with Pakistan, just before India is divided into two separate religious states. While the time and place may be unfamiliar to many teen readers, the dramatic, intertwining stories of the three young people at the heart of this story are sure to draw them in.Tariq, a Muslim,...

Secrets buried by lifetimes

Half Lives is a smart adventure story, but it’s also perilously full of potential spoilers, so let’s step lightly, shall we? At 17, Icie’s biggest problem in life is that her boyfriend just broke up with her via text message. When she gets a 911 text from her folks, she knows it’s serious—one is highly placed in the federal government and the other is a nuclear...